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Accepted
Kaz Wolfe
Asked: 2017-06-14 09:14:46 +0800 CST

I can not run `fwupdmgr` on my system

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Whenever I try to run fwupdmgr on my system (either as root or a regular user), I receive the following error message:

Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.fwupd: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.fwupd': timed out

This problem just seemed to develop out of nowhere, and is causing some significant worry as it's preventing me from grabbing some security updates for my computer's BIOS.

I am running Ubuntu 16.04 with fwupd version 0.7.0-0ubuntu4.3 installed on my system. I am also aware of this question, but it is currently unanswered and my system does not have fwupd running at startup.

What is going on, and how can I fix it?

services

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I managed to solve my own problem in a very odd way. After doing a bit of digging into services, I discovered a binary: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/fwupd/fwupd.

    Upon running this manually, I received the following error message:

    (fwupd:32140): Fu-WARNING **: FuMain: failed to load AppStream data: AppStream metadata name /var/cache/app-info/xmls/.goutputstream-PY2M1Y not valid, expected .xml[.*] or .yml[.*]

    Deleting the file mentioned like so:

    rm /var/cache/app-info/xmls/.goutputstream-PY2M1Y

    solved my problem, and I can update my system firmware yet again.

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